Free Darkside Blues: SciFi Alien Romance (Dark Planet Warriors Book 4.5) by Anna Carven Page A

taken him in as a child, he’d been a harsh master, his treatment of Kai verging on cruelty.
    Vadim was silent for a while, watching the glassy pond as his man jigged the rod up and down.
    “Ya know,” he said finally, “I ain’t had anything to eat or drink for three days now.”
    The statement chilled Kai to the bone.
    “They’ve been poisoning me, Kainan. It’s been so subtle, and over such a long period of time, years, in fact, but I finally noticed it. And don’t give me that look, kid. I ain’t crazy. I got my own personal physician to confirm it. It’s targeted stuff; gene technology that’s designed to affect only me. Complicated stuff. Some shit about degrading my genome. They’ve been putting it in the fuckin’ air-conditioning vents, in my food, my water.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “Can ya imagine? I’ve been breathing it in for months, maybe even years.”
    “Who’s responsible for this, boss?”
    “The one we always suspect but can never pin down. The technocrat. My wretched offspring.”
    “The Second ? Arik?” Kai squatted on his haunches, so he wasn’t standing over the Boss. He kept quiet for a moment as the shock of realization hit him. Arik was the second lieutenant of the Urubora clan. He was a true politician of the underworld, smooth, wily, and impossible to keep a finger on. And he was Vadim’s biological son. “I will kill him.”
    “Ya have no evidence yet, kid. Slow down a little, or the Council of Families will have yer head like they want, and everything’ll be lost. Arik’s East faction’s grown like a cancer in the past few years. They’re big, but there’s also a lot of dead wood amongst them. Remember, Kainan, we are constantly expecting betrayal in one form or another. That’s the life of a gangster. Ya need to stick with the plan now.”
    Kai tried to rein in his ever-present anger as he studied his boss and mentor in detail, taking in his parched appearance. “If you don’t eat or drink…”
    “Either way, I ain’t got much time left. Age is finally catching up with me, kid.” The boss shook his head. “One by one, they’ve started to replace my people from the inside, turning their loyalties against me. I bet they’re going to try and stage a coup when I croak. Yer the only person who can hold them back, but they think they’ve got ya after that little stunt they pulled on the Glory Strip.”
    “They’re trying to frame me.” Kai shook his head. “But that makes no sense.”
    “Arik’s gonna try’n haul ya before the Council of Families for treason. Against me.” He laughed, a dry, bitter sound that turned into a dirty cough. “Can ya imagine? Word on the street is that ya staged the ambush and took Melia hostage. They’re saying ya wanna use her to threaten me. It’s all fuckin’ nonsense, of course. It’s just a fabricated story to cover up the fact that they failed to kill her. We all know what would have happened if she hadn’t survived.”
    Kai nodded, cold anger building inside him. If Melia had died, he would have shouldered the responsibility. The Families would have demanded the ultimate retribution.
    The only punishment suitable for that level of failure was death. They would have ordered him to kneel before them and slice his guts open.
    Zyara didn’t know it, but by saving Melia, she’d saved Kai’s life.
    The whole scenario was murky and ridiculous, the threads of power becoming impossibly twisted and tangled. “So what do you want me to do? ”
    The boss looked at him, his grey-blue eyes becoming sharp again for just a moment. His face was old and weathered, his skin paper-thin and almost translucent. Kai was looking at a living corpse. Medical technology had kept this man alive much longer than nature intended.
    “Ya have enough followers to form yer own clan now, Kainan. The Urubora is finished. I should’ve stopped the rot decades ago, but I got complacent.” He chuckled again, his self-loathing evident. “I